People gather at a memorial outside St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church on Sunday morning in Newtown, Conn. / Eileen Blass, USA TODAY

by Cathy Lynn Grossman and Yamiche Alcindor, USA TODAY

by Cathy Lynn Grossman and Yamiche Alcindor, USA TODAY

A question lingers after Friday's national day of mourning for those killed in Newtown, Conn.: For whom did the bells toll?

The deep sounding of a church bell is an age-old expression of rejoicing but also of grief. The number of rings told a story about who Americans think merits such attention:

--26 rings for the Sandy Hook Elementary School children and staff.

--27 if Nancy Lanza, her son Adam's first victim, was counted.

--28 if Adam Lanza, the troubled 20-year-old shooter who killed himself as well, was counted, too.

At Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church in Dayton, Va., a tiny congregation in the Shenandoah Valley, the bell in their brick tower rang 28 times last Sunday at a solemn moment between the end of prayers and the passing of the peace.

The Rev. Ted Schulz says, "We included the mother of the killer and the lost soul who sadly took his own life. And there was not a single objection. â?¦ This is an immense tragedy all the way around. So we mourn all who died. Ultimately, God is the judge."

In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel Malloy called for exactly 26 rings. The National Council of Churches and many Catholic archdioceses joined in. After all, it is the mass killing of innocent children that has prompted the national outpouring, says Anthea Butler, associate professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania.

"If I were in Newtown, I would do 26 rings. It would be too painful for those who have lost children to ask them to be accepting of the person who had the guns (Nancy Lanza) and the person who used them. But in other communities, it might be appropriate to do more, to recognize all the deaths," says Butler.

The bells of St. Rose of Lima, the Newtown Catholic Church, which has held funerals for eight murdered children, have been ringing since the shooting. There was no marked number of rings on Friday, the week anniversary of the shootings, says Brian Wallace, a spokesman for the Diocese of Bridgeport, which includes St. Rose.

Monsignor Robert Weiss, who has spent days at funeral Masses and burials, has asked tearfully for prayers for a wider circle. It includes the children and staff at the school, St. Rose and its priests, Adam and Nancy Lanza ,and Nancy Lanza's mother, a former parishioner who officials said attended church there.

The Catholic Church and the community of St. Rose, Wallace says, "are praying for all those who were lost."

Whether by bells or by prayers, that's what many churches did.

Monsignor Rick Hilgartner of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops explains the theology behind this: At the heart of the Catholic Church's teachings about death is God's mercy. For each one of those 28 lives, someone is grieving."

It can be a difficult teaching, Hilgartner says. "The challenge is that we see so many clearly innocent victims with these young children and good-hearted teachers."

Mourners and leaders may look at Nancy Lanza as an imperfect person and Adam Lanza as undeserving. However, the Catholic faith, while not condoning violence, sees both mother and son as part of the evil that also took the lives of the children, teachers and principal at the school.

If it were up to Heidi Busse, a Minneapolis mother of two young children, and editor of Take Out, a magazine for Catholic families, the Lanzas would both be remembered despite the rush to blame "guns, the mother and society."

Busse says she cringed when she learned of the Newtown deaths but her thoughts also turned to the shooter's mother and the burden parents carry in trying to raise their children to be good and peaceful people.

"As a parent you can only do so much," Busse says. "You are constantly thinking about how your kid is acting and how your kid is being raised. You work your hardest but you feel such guilt trying to do the best you can."

In New Haven, Conn., Gregory Sterling, dean of Yale Divinity School, chose to ring the bells 26 times and say a prayer in concert with the churches in Newtown -- then ring out twice more and pray again, this time for the Lanzas.

Ringing bells from a church tower is not a Southern Baptist tradition but the deaths in Newtown were very much mourned in prayer services for the last week.

Pastor Ronnie Floyd, senior pastor of the Cross Church network of four mega-churches in Northwest Arkansas, wrote an essay in response to the tragedy for Baptist Press. He wrote about how God knows and counts all tears and "the church must learn to weep with those who weep."

Friday, Floyd said, this is a lesson in forgiveness and trusting God "regardless of the injustices that come our way."